Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer<\/em> No. 32, your guide to the best and Verge<\/em>-iest stuff in the world. (If you\u2019re new here, welcome, happy weekend, and also, you can read all the old editions at the Installer<\/em> homepage<\/a>.)\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n This week, I\u2019ve been writing about AI search engines<\/strong><\/a> and the future of Disney Plus<\/strong><\/a>, reading about Anne Hathaway<\/strong><\/a> and Andrew Huberman<\/strong><\/a> and Jonathan Kanter<\/strong><\/a>, with the WVFRM crew, continuing to watch every \u201c\u201d <\/em>video I can get my hands on, listening to the Black Box<\/strong><\/em><\/a> podcast, and learning and how to apply it to every aspect of my life.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I also have for you a bunch of new things to watch this weekend, a new AI voice notes app, a delightful new-old keyboard, an app for food tracking, some comedy podcasts, and a whole bunch more. Let\u2019s get into it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n (As always, the best part of Installer<\/em> is your ideas and tips. What are you into right now? What should everyone else be playing, watching, reading, whittling, looking at, or cooking this week? Tell me everything: installer@theverge.com<\/a>. And if you know someone else who might enjoy Installer<\/em>, forward it to them, and tell them to subscribe here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Jesse David Fox<\/strong><\/a> knows more about comedy than, I don\u2019t know, probably anybody. He writes for Vulture<\/em> (our Vox Media friends) about comedy; he wrote a book about comedy delightfully called Comedy Book<\/strong><\/em><\/a>; he hosts the very funny and sometimes very deep podcast Good One<\/em><\/a>; and he just turned that podcast into a Peacock special that dropped this week called Good One: A Show About Jokes<\/strong><\/em><\/a>. <\/em>It\u2019s about Mike Birbiglia, who I love, but also about what it means to be funny and creative and just, like, a person.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I asked Jesse to share his homescreen, in part because I want to know if Comedy Apps are a thing but also to see how someone with his job \u2014\u00a0to constantly be watching, listening to, reading, discovering, talking about, and dissecting funny stuff \u2014\u00a0actually finds all that stuff.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n So here\u2019s Jesse\u2019s homescreen, plus some info on the apps he uses and why:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The phone: <\/strong>iPhone 13 Mini, but I don\u2019t like it. I do like that it\u2019s not that big, but I vow my next phone will not be an Apple.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The wallpaper: <\/strong>The lock screen is an Art Shay photograph. My homescreen is Joel Meyerowitz. Aren\u2019t they nice? I saw them both at The Photography Show years ago.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The apps: <\/strong>Calendar, Photos, Camera, Apple Notes, Settings, Weather, Clock, SevenBell, Phone, Yelp, Peacock, Messages, Marvel Unlimited.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Generally, these are the apps I use and am fine using. Weather, Notes, Camera, and the podcast apps (I listen to a lot of podcasts to do research for Good One<\/em>) are my most used. I check Slack and Instagram all the time but would prefer to make it more challenging for me to do so, so I need to search for them.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Two apps have recently moved to the homepage: 1.) Peacock, so I can constantly play the Good One<\/em> special to get the views up, and 2.) Marvel Unlimited. I recently started reading comics. There are certain MCU movies and shows I liked so much that I thought maybe I\u2019d like the source. And I\u2019m loving it! Love that Groot.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I also asked Jesse to share a few things he\u2019s into right now. Here\u2019s what he sent back:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Here\u2019s what the <\/em>Installer community is into this week. I want to know what you\u2019re into right now as well! Email <\/em>installer@theverge.com<\/em><\/a> or message +1 203-570-8663 with your recommendations for anything and everything, and we\u2019ll feature some of our favorites here every week.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cFound a new macro tracker \/ food diary that I love \u2014 FoodNoms<\/strong><\/a>. It has the best AI feature I\u2019ve seen in this category: it will guess at the approximate caloric \/ nutritional value of a meal, so if you go out for breakfast and don\u2019t feel like trying to break down every ounce of that eggs Benedict, the app will help you get a ballpark estimate to add to your diary.\u201d \u2013 Nick<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cAddicted to playing \u2018\u2019 by Djo on loop and only just now found out<\/strong><\/a> that it\u2019s by the side project of the cute floppy-haired guy from Stranger Things<\/em>.\u201d \u2013\u00a0Amy<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201c3 Body Problem<\/strong><\/em><\/a> has consumed my week and my brain. Now that I\u2019ve finished S1, I\u2019m on to the audiobook<\/strong><\/a>, narrated by Rosalind Chao.\u201d \u2013\u00a0Bud<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI\u2019m currently building the Lego Technic Mars Crew Exploration Rover<\/strong><\/a>. It just dropped this month!\u201d \u2013 Jeff<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cSince you mentioned battle royales, Blizzard has just released a limited-time BR called Plunderstorm<\/strong><\/em><\/a>. It is accessible within the main menu of WoW, uses WoW assets and themes, but does not feature your player character and plays completely differently. It is the weirdest thing I\u2019ve seen in ages.\u201d \u2013 Sanjeev<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201c. This game app especially shines on iPad where you can create larger battlefields. It\u2019s almost meditative to play rather than stressful to lose like Risk<\/em>, once you get the hang of it.\u201d \u2013 Jake<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201c just shipped this week on Steam, and it\u2019s totally worth checking out if you\u2019re a fan of . I\u2019ve been playing an early version on itch.io for a couple of years, and fair warning: I had to uninstall it because I was playing it too much. So I guess I would nominate this for The Uninstaller?\u201d \u2013\u00a0Ron<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cDragon\u2019s Dogma 2<\/strong><\/em><\/a> had been occupying my brain space all week. It\u2019s a marvelous mix of fantasy adventuring and a chaos simulator, with spectacular results. Also, Giant Bomb has an ongoing show called in which they take turns playing the most notoriously bad games ever made and cosplay as characters from them. It\u2019s hilarious, nostalgic, and also heartbreaking as they struggle with busted games.\u201d \u2013 Bobby<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI used to watch everything from Marvel, but I don\u2019t think I\u2019m the only one who lost interest in the MCU. As a longtime Spidey and X-Men fan, I now scratch my Marvel itch with games. Card games for mobile and one for desktop. Marvel Snap<\/strong><\/em><\/a> is quite fun, and you can play (and win!) without spending money. Midnight Suns<\/strong><\/em><\/a> is also amusing but a bit bloated. But hanging around with the heroes between missions is nice. Make mine Marvel!\u201d \u2013 Jasper<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Roughly once a year, I stumble across an NPR Tiny Desk video, realize Tiny Desk is the best thing on YouTube, and then spend a few days or months watching dozens of them. (This time, it was that got me rehooked.) To me, this is everything delightful about the internet, all in one place: it\u2019s both low-tech and really well made, silly and intimate, and still super professional, and it honestly feels like I\u2019m in the room with or <\/em>or . And yes, obviously, of course I watch every single time I get into it again.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nThe Drop<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n
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Screen share<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n
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Crowdsourced<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n
Signing off<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n